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[konstant]

                                                                 

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[hippie_ninja]

He doesn't watch K the whole time. He tries to sleep again and can't, so he listens to the city instead, identifying sounds he knew in the old world and imagining what it will be like to live here. (How long?)

He instinctively sits up when K stirs, used to having to block a bleary, panicked blow when people wake that hard.

[konstant]

K doesn't strike out, though his head turns and he automatically tracks the sudden movement beside him; he squints, blurry, and it takes a long few moments before recognition breaks across his features, but break it does.

He winces, getting a hand behind him to hold him up, and shakes his head to clear it.

"Jesus," he mutters, half to himself, half to signal he knows him, his voice croaking again with disuse. He groans and sits forward to rub at his eyes. "'d I wake you?"

[hippie_ninja]

"No, I'm okay." He settles his back against the wall. He hasn't been asleep in hours, so his voice is soft, clear. "How do you feel?"

[konstant]

Like Sapper Morton put him through another wall.

He takes a moment to answer, giving himself time to adjust to being awake - being alive. The grogginess is already lifting, taking with it the lingering, creeping claustrophobia from sleep, and if he doesn't feel normal he at least feels hopeful for the first time since waking up in the bathtub that whatever this is seems to be fading.

"Better," he finally says, and when he drops his hand away from his face and looks up at Jesus, his eyes are clearer. "When did you -" No, he remembers the gun, remembers bits and pieces of their conversation, remembers Jesus talking about dreams and being human. It's just the time piece that's missing. "How long?"

[hippie_ninja]

"Hard to say. You've had four or five hours since I woke up." A solid eight or nine, maybe, all told. "You don't look as bad. I'm not tempted to call a doctor."

[konstant]

Since I woke up.

"You slept?" he clarifies, relieved, pleased - even as he stretches his limbs trying to get feeling back into them faster, trying to make that feeling into something more comfortable.

"How are you feeling?"

[hippie_ninja]

He wasn't expecting K to have any reaction to the fact of him actually getting rest. The relief in K's voice makes him grin, self-conscious at the unexpected affection it implies.

"I'm all right. Better than when I got here." Not ready, just yet, to leave. "You probably don't feel up to going out tonight, do you, yet?"

[konstant]

He glances at the outline of light on the wall, doubtful, but the truth is he doesn't know. The truth is he's still working out what he feels.

"Is there something going on?" he hedges.

[hippie_ninja]

"Nothing special. I just thought we could go to a magic show or find some music." Is he asking K on a date?

He didn't come here planning to do this, but there it is.

[konstant]

Helpfully, without really thinking about it, K has picked up the sandwich he fell asleep on last night when he noticed it, settling his shoulders against the nightstand so he can still see Jesus.

He's more focused on considering their options for leaving this room - and what it means that Jesus wants to leave it with him considering his own past week and how it ended - and what it would take to make him confident in doing so.

"I don't know that the blade runner is really gone," he cautions. Or how he'll react to being outside again. "But I think I'd like that."

[hippie_ninja]

"My friend thinks it was the locals. I haven't seen any walkers in a few days... If they're gone, the blade runner probably is, too." But he's willing to stay in, too, if K feels safer that way.

"I met someone in prison who runs a club for creative types. Poetry, singing, it's a little more laid back than where we work."

[konstant]

He can't stay in this room forever. He doesn't even want to, not really, and despite that he doesn't want anyone else around him hurt - ever, but especially not Jesus - he finds he does feel better about the prospect of having someone with him when he tries.

And he glances up, immediately interested, when he hears about the club.

"Is that something you think you'd like?"

[hippie_ninja]

"I really like poetry," he admits with a little grin, a tiny shrug. "I like the quieter places, it's just not everyone's go-to."

Meaning yes, he would really, really like to take K there.

[konstant]

The grin, the veiled giddiness, make K smile. In Los Angeles, quiet places had been few and far in between outside of his cruiser; he's curious about what it looks like here.

"I'm in," he says, not as easily as he might have a few weeks ago, but still interested. "Do you have a favorite?"

[hippie_ninja]

He isn't surprised K agrees. It seems like something K would enjoy too, or he wouldn't have asked, but he's still glad. "I was reading Ovid's Metamorphosis back home. But books were so hard to come by, I never did find a favorite. Maybe I will now."

[konstant]

K shakes his head; he's not familiar. So much was lost in the blackout, and some of what's left is still off limits to replicants - but much of it isn't.

"There are books everywhere here." And he's still a bit awed by it honestly. "What was Metamorphosis like?"

[hippie_ninja]

"It's a history of the world, told in myths and legends. I didn't get to finish it, but maybe I will here. The last part I read was Hades being shot with Cupid's arrow so love could infiltrate Hell." He gives the window, the strange city they're in, a wry look. "Seems fitting now."

[konstant]

There are parallels K can draw on his own. He wasn't LAPD's most effective blade runner, though, because he imposed his own assumptions over what people told him.

It stings and aches right now to remember that, but he focuses on Jesus, focuses on the curious streak.

"How so?"

[hippie_ninja]

"Because to hear about this place, you'd think love would be the last thing anyone could find. Everything has the quota putting pressure on it." Even Jesus feels it and he knows K does, too. He wouldn't have slept with him if not for the city reframing everything. He wouldn't be surprised if it was the same for K.

"But people are happy together. We're all up against the same wall, but I've had people tell me they've found love like they never had at home."

[konstant]

K has never had a friend like Jesus, but odds are good they could have known each other for years without it even occurring to him to make a move. Maybe not, with the combination of interest and respect, but it certainly wouldn't have happened already. He's thought about this before.

He thinks about it often.

"One of the first people I spoke to here, one of the first to help me, insists that this place is more what people make of it then what the officials try to sell it as. He insists there are people here he wouldn't know how to live without now." K isn't a skeptic, but he does happen to think that perhaps it's being romanticized a bit as a coping mechanism.

[hippie_ninja]

"Your friend isn't wrong. You have to make a place bearable somehow. Usually, the only way to do it is with other people." Everyone he talks to is horrified to learn what his home world is like, but he misses it. He misses Hilltop, he misses Aaron and Alexandria, he misses the road.

"But it would be very easy to use this place as an excuse to become angry and bitter. To just use people. Instead, they make connections, deep ones."

[konstant]

"Vrenille," K offers while he digests the rest of that. They both know Vrenille.

Finally he smiles, a little sad, and nods.

"I should try to shower if we're going anywhere today."

[hippie_ninja]

Vrenille. He likes him, he likes that K talks to him.

"All right." He'll brush his teeth and his hair, get ready, hold down the fort while K does.

[konstant]

The light still hurts, but not anything like it has the day before; it feels like walking around outside the biome for short periods of time, and he can tolerate that. The shower wakes him up, makes him feel more focused - which he absolutely takes advantage of to keep his mind from wandering too much as bits and pieces of memory come back.

When they're ready to head out, K sticks very close to Jesus's side and stays alert, collar flipped up but not fastened, hands deep in his pockets and his gun riding his ribs.

[hippie_ninja]

Jesus usually moves through crowds like water, but with K beside him he's slower and more willing to take up space. He keeps his hands free, and he watches those around them--starting first with the way they walk and then, when nothing is alarming, he'll offer little smiles or nods if they meet eyes.

"You said you'd found a lot of books around here. What do you read?"